Native Tongue Reading Group
Witchy Methodologies2016 What If Women Don’t Exist?Inventing a World That Has Not Happened

A Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, oil paint on cardboard, 2014

The title and imagery of this series of work is drawn from a proto-feminist science fiction story written by Margaret Cavendish in 1666. These painting objects explore the rich imagery of this ‘Blazing World’ – unfolding landscapes populated by strange half-human figures and fantastical architecture carved in amber and diamond.

The works also celebrate the spectacular self-staging of the author. Cavendish writes herself into the story as scribe and confident to it’s heroine, and is represented in elaborate engravings in the frontispieces of early editions of the text (which she self-funded).

Installation view at JVA Project Space, London, 2014

Using the recurring motif of the toy theatre, these works reference the playfulness and power inherent in the worldbuilding practices of speculative fiction; as well as the invention of female authorship in a patriarchal world.

A Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World was originally created for Jerwood Visual Arts Project Space, supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation.